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Shuberts were eager to use him again, should he wish, or need, to return to Broadway. He could afford, therefore, to approach this new challenge with enthusiasm rather than trepidation.

      There are, perhaps predictably, several versions of how Archie Leach managed to secure for himself a studio contract. One account, which was popularised by Mae West, has it that she ‘discovered’ him when he was a humble extra on the Paramount lot.¹ This is quite untrue; indeed, it was a canard that continued to infuriate Cary Grant whenever he saw it in print.² He was never an extra, and he had made seven movies before he first appeared with Mae West. Another version – more plausible but still with no documented evidence to support it – was put forward by Phil Charig: according to his account, he took Archie Leach with him when he was summoned for an interview at Paramount’s music department, and, although he was not offered a job, the interviewer was sufficiently impressed by Leach’s good looks to recommend him for a screen test.³ There is, however, another version which, since it originated with Grant himself and there is no obvious reason to doubt him on this matter, may be regarded as authoritative: according to Grant, a New York agent – Billy ‘Square Deal’ Grady of the William Morris Agency – gave him the office address in Hollywood of his friend Walter Herzbrun, and Herzbrun, in turn, introduced him to one of his most important clients, the director Marion Gering.⁴

      Archie Leach did not just have handsome features – plenty of other young, out-of-work actors in Los Angeles at that time were that good looking – he also had genuine charm. It is clear that Archie Leach found it remarkably easy to find people who were able and willing to support his embryonic career. As had happened in New York, Leach became a popular new guest at Hollywood social occasions, and it was not long before he had the opportunity to impress a number of producers and directors. His new, unofficial patron Marion Gering was planning to screen-test his wife, and he thought that Leach could play opposite her. Gering took Leach to a small dinner party at the home of B. P. Schulberg, the head of production at Paramount’s West Coast studio. Schulberg was, it seems, happy to accede to Gering’s request, and a screen test and the offer of a long-term contract (worth $450 per week) were the results.

      Archie Leach had achieved, with what seems like remarkable ease, the basis for a movie career. Before he could begin acting in any movies, however, he first needed to work on his identity. As with many young contract players, the studio questioned the marquee value of his name: ‘They said: “Archie just doesn’t sound right in America.’” ‘It doesn’t sound particularly right in Britain either,’ was his rather embarrassed reply.⁵ He was told, without any intimation that the matter might be open to negotiation, that ‘Archie Leach’ was unacceptable, and was instructed to come up with a new name ‘as soon as possible’.⁶ That evening, over dinner with Fay Wray and John Monk Saunders (the author of Nikki), it was suggested that Leach might adopt the name of the character he had played in their show: Cary Lockwood. Leach liked ‘Cary’ as his first name, but he was told by someone at the studio that there was already a Harold Lockwood in Hollywood,⁷ and so the search for a new surname continued.⁸ The studio advised him to choose a short name: it was the era of Gable, Cooper, Cagney and Bogart. A secretary gave Leach the standard list of suggestions which had been compiled for such a purpose. ‘Grant’, according to his own recollection of the deliberations, was the surname which ‘jumped out at me’.⁹

      Paramount, it seems, was equally satisfied with the combination. ‘Cary’ sounded pleasingly ambiguous, a supple name which, when pronounced to rhyme with ‘wary’, could suit a sophisticated image, and, when pronounced to rhyme with ‘Cary’, could fit with a more plebeian persona. The name’s new owner never seemed particularly interested in proposing a definitive pronunciation: some of his friends, such as Alfred Hitchcock, favoured the former, while others, such as David Niven, favoured the latter (he himself managed, typically, to find a subtle via media, and he only ever protested when anyone attempted to call him ‘Car’). ‘Grant’, on the other hand, sounded reassuringly American; it had more simple and solid connotations, a nod perhaps to the Hero of Appomattox, General Ulysses S. Grant, eighteenth president of the United States. Someone noticed that Cary Grant’s initials were the same as Clark Gable’s and the reverse of Gary Cooper’s; it seemed a good omen – Gable and Cooper were the most popular matinee idols of the day.

      Cary Grant was born, in effect, on 7 December 1931,¹⁰ the day that he signed his Paramount contract and consigned ‘Archie Leach’ to relative – but by no means complete – obscurity at the age of twenty-seven years and eleven months. Cary Grant was not a new man, but rather a young one with the rare opportunity to restyle himself in a manner which would suit his aspirations. The name change itself was a fairly routine, pragmatic decision by the studio; it was not intended as an invitation to Archie Leach to embark on any profound voyage of self-discovery. Paramount had already decided who Cary Grant should be: a cut-price, younger, dark-haired substitute for Gary Cooper.¹¹ Cooper had joined Paramount in 1927; by 1931, he was complaining that he was being worked too hard. While he was filming City Streets that year, he suffered a near collapse from the combined effects of jaundice and exhaustion. When the movie had been completed, he left for Europe, and began to spend more time with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso than his studio felt was desirable. Archie Leach, smoothed out into the more refulgent form of ‘Cary Grant’, was to be used to remind Cooper – gently at first – that he was not quite as distinctive nor as valuable as he might have thought he was. The two men did have a number of things in common: both had English backgrounds (Cooper’s parents were both English, and he had been educated in Bedfordshire¹²); both were physically powerful men who could also show their vulnerability; and both were versatile enough to play comic as well as romantic roles.

      Cary Grant, it was reasoned, could be groomed for stardom by taking the ‘Gary Cooper roles’ that Gary Cooper turned down, and, by playing on the perceived similarity between the two men, Paramount hoped that Cooper’s ego could be held in check by the constant presence of a possible replacement at the studio. A fan magazine of the time – possibly with some covert encouragement from Paramount’s publicists – noted that ‘Cary looks enough like Gary to be his brother. Both are tall, they weigh about the same, and they fit the same sort of roles.’¹³ Cooper had been warned. It was a common tactic employed by all studios at the time to prevent their most popular stars from becoming too ‘difficult’: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, for example, had brought in James Craig as a threat to Clark Gable, and Robert Young as a threat to Robert Montgomery. It was good insurance. If Gary became too demanding, Cary could take over (only a modest dash would need to be erased on the dressing-room door); it was considered unlikely, and, as often happened in similar cases elsewhere, it was probably thought more likely that Cary Grant would become a useful romantic lead in a string of relatively modest movies.

      Cary Grant, however, had a quite different outlook on the possibilities opened up by his sudden change of identity. He did not wish to live indefinitely within quotation marks; he wanted to create a ‘Cary Grant’ that he could grow into. Whoever this ‘Cary Grant’ was to be, he would have to be someone who seemed real to Archie Leach as well as to others: ‘If I couldn’t clearly see out, how could anyone see in?’¹⁴ All that he started with, he admitted, was a façade, and ‘the protection of that façade proved both an advantage and a disadvantage’.¹⁵ It offered him both the chance to change and an excuse not to change. Archie Leach wanted to change. The playwright Moss

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